Read All About It, Part 221b
by robyn redhead
Summary: When Martha C. Doyle starts writing a biography on Sherlock Holmes on her online blog, she doesn't realise the trouble it will get her in. Particularly after she meets charismatic young actor Richard Brook, who is all-too keen to tell Martha all he knows about the world's only Consulting Detective. Some Jim Moriarty/OC.
1. Prologue

Prologue

I've always nurtured a love of books; for stories, for fictional characters. In life, stories are forgotten, memories fade, and people leave. But not in books. No, in books, the stories never change; they remain a constant factor in an unstable reality. The characters are loyal to you and to you alone they are faithful until the end. Whether it's been minutes or years since your last encounter, you can rely on fictional characters to still welcome you with open arms; undemanding and unassuming. With my mother owning a bookshop in my home town of Plymouth, and my father an apparently renowned author in the States (I wouldn't know for sure; my father moved to New York before I was born. Though I'm supposed to bear a strong physical resemblance, according to the photograph I once found in my mother's drawer.) I had no doubt that my love of books and literature was innate within me, and certainly from a very early age I would love nothing more than curling up in the armchair with an adventure story book; filled with thrilling discoveries and brave heroes.

But it was not until I was nineteen, and living by myself in a flat in London, that I discovered that my real passion lay not solely in books, but in biographies.

People disappear when they die. Their voice, their laughter, the warmth of their breath. Their flesh. Eventually their bones. This is both dreadful and natural. Yet for some there is an exception to this annihilation.* For in biographies they continue to exist. We can rediscover them. Through the written word, we can still feel them, still live alongside them. And more importantly, _they_ can live alongside _us_.

When I was halfway through my degree at University College in London (an embarrassingly dull choice of English Literature with the pretentious splash of a minor in creative writing) I discovered that I not only enjoyed _reading_ biographies of idols both past and present, but that I wanted to _write_ them too. _I_ wanted to be the one responsible for giving people an insight into others' lives; for rediscovering somebody whose life story had long been forgotten.

I set up my first (and largely unsuccessful) blog, where I wrote brief biographies of depressingly mainstream idols using no doubt suspect internet sources. My prose was an unattractive combination of hyperbole and sarcasm that I thought, or pretended to think, was very funny. After several somewhat wasted months of work on this blog, I decided that I needed a new angle. I was responsible for any great rediscoveries, and I certainly wasn't giving anyone any insight. Anything I wrote had been written a thousand times before, albeit without my bizarre and so-thought 'witty' take on it.

So I hit the streets, abandoning for a brief spell my degree, which was taking me nowhere, and my friends. Or, rather, as I didn't really have friends, my fellow college intellectuals. I abandoned these in an attempt to discover a hidden gem whose life story I could scribe and whose discovery _I_ alone could be held responsible for.

I had written; _The Beggar's Cap-A True Telling of Life on the Streets in Present Day London, 'Would You Like Fries With That?'-Tales from Everyone's Favourite Burger Bar, _and_ A Really Rubbish Story-What Your Local Bin Man Really Thinks About Lugging Litter_, when I finally stumbled across a name on the internet; a name that would haunt me forever more.

Had I known it at the time?

No, of course not. At the time, it had been merely some text on a screen. A name. Someone's identity. Just as insignificant as my own name printed at the top of my embarrassing attempt as a biographical blog.

Except I think I knew even then that this name meant much more than that. For as a read it, a shiver went down my spine, and the fine hairs on my arms stood up. I knew I'd found them. After months of trailing around writing about homeless beggars and fast-food workers, I knew I'd finally found what I'd been waiting for. My hidden gem. Or, as it transpired, not so hidden. For they lived in one of the flats just down the road at 221b Baker Street.

And their name? Their name was Sherlock Holmes.

*Taken from Diane Setterfield's Novel _The Thirteenth Tale_, because I just loved how she described how people continued on after death in books.

A/N-Any reviews would be lovely! I'm hoping to really get this fic flowing soon


	2. Chapter One

**Author's Note: Thanks for all the interest in this so far; the plot line is still very much in development, so many apologies for the lack of anything at all really related to Sherlock in this chapter. But I'm just trying to set it up well. But I'm afraid I got a bit carried away, sorry. Anyway, hope you enjoy! I'll try to update soon with some actual Sherlock content. Thanks again.**

The 11th October started off just like any other, normal, Friday.

I awoke, not unusually, to the sound of a disturbance in the kitchen, closely followed by the pounding on my bedroom door by one of my flatmates, Ben.

"Martie!" I heard him calling. "Martie the toaster's on the bloody blink again! It's all smoking and everything…_Martie!_"

Groaning, I dragged myself out of bed and pulled open the door before it fell off its hinges. The combination of rotting damp in the flat and Ben's fists was a lethal one.

Leaking slowly into the bedroom from the grimy kitchen was the smell of burning, and through a thin smoke I could make out Ben, all 6 foot 4 of him, stood in a baggy black vest and greying sweatpants. His longish hair was in serious need of a trim, as was his beard, and there was a lingering smell of unwashed body mingled in with the smoke.

In the kitchen, following some hurried jargon from Ben, I located the source of the problem; a piece of Ben's pop tart was stuck in the bottom of the toaster and was happily smoking away, until I used some tongs to retrieve the offending item and throw it in the overflowing rubbish bin. By the time I had opened all of the windows to avoid the fire alarm going off (for the fifth time that year), and the smell of burning had just about dispersed, it was 9 o'clock, and the arrival of Mariah in the kitchen told me I was, once again, going to be late for my Friday morning lectures.

Mariah was the third person living in this grim, rather unhappy flat on Whiteford Road. She was only three years my senior; currently studying for her Master's degree in Classical History, but she seemed much older. She disapproved of most things, it seemed, but in particular she disapproved of Ben (understandable; I largely disapproved of him too) and of me (not understandable at all, as far as I was aware). She was petite and curvy; strikingly good looking, with large, dark brown eyes set back strongly in her face, which rolled on an almost continual basis in disapproval.

They rolled now as she came into the kitchen and she saw the two of us; me fighting with the bulging black bin liner in the corner, and Ben stood on a stool wafting a magazine under the fire alarm to ensure it didn't go off.

"Good morning," she said, frowning. "Pyjamas at this time of the day, Martha?" she said, still insisting, despite my protests, on calling me by my full name. "Little late, isn't it?"

I glanced over the bin bag at the kitchen clock to confirm that it was, in fact, only 9am. Anyone would have thought it was late afternoon judging from Mariah's disapproval.

"Sorry," I said, thought I wasn't. "But Ben was having trouble with the toaster."

The disapproving eyes now focused on Ben, who had now settled on the stood and begun reading the month-old copy of NME magazine he had been using to disperse the smoke.

"Pop tart get stuck again?" Mariah said. Ben smiled meekly. He had told me once following a 'wine tasting' evening at our flat (including myself and Ben and five peculiar acquaintances I have seen only a few times since) that he was quite scared of Mariah. I could kind of see where he was coming from. Though she was at least a foot shorter than Ben, and a few inches shorter than myself, there was something inexplicably intimidating about the dark haired girl. But I would never let her know I thought this. It would only give her pleasure beyond belief.

"Right," Mariah said, when it became apparent that neither Ben nor myself was going to offer up any conversation. "Well I'm off to Uni. I'd offer you two a lift, but Ben I know you never set foot in there if you can help it, and Martha I assume you're going to want to put some proper clothes on and I haven't time to wait. Sorry," she added, as an untruthful afterthought.

Ben pardoned Mariah with another meek smile, and I continued to scowl over the top of the bin.

When Mariah had left the flat, (and following a rendition of "Wake up Boo" by the Boo Radley's, courtesy of Ben and myself accompanied by the kitchen radio) I dressed in my usual mad rush, and then paused for a moment to check my online writing blog. I was thrilled to discover I'd had a new viewer, before I remembered it had been myself the previous evening when using Ben's laptop. But I still managed to waste a full half an hour online, eventually ending up on Wikipedia reading about tree frogs at 9.53am, before hurriedly closing down the webpage and flying out the door. I could hear Ben singing along to Morrissey by himself in the kitchen as I did so. He was in his second year of studying Music Production at the uni. Well, I use the term 'studying' very loosely. As far as I was aware, he _was_ registered on the course, but the number of days he'd actually spent in lectures since we started sharing the flat together in September was probably less than six. Mariah despaired with him, but I _liked_ him. He was fun, if a little strange at times, to be around, and his lack of enthusiasm for study just made me feel better about myself if ever I missed a lecture.

Which was going to happen now unless I really hurried. But the Underground was a nightmare at this time of day, and it was necessary, if you did not have the luxury of your own car, to take a short tube journey to get to campus. As I sprinted from the tube station to the lecture hall, I passed Mariah just leaving in the car, having already successfully completed her morning lecture. She wound down the window and surveyed my pink, sweaty face with distaste and disapproval.

"You're late," she said. As if I needed telling! "I've just seen Professor March and he seemed well."

Mariah acted as if this was something I would be thrilled to hear. She was on annoyingly friendly terms with what seemed like all of the professors at UCL.

"Right, well I'm off," said Mariah, smiling importantly. "I'll see you back at the flat later. Maybe Ben will have cooked something for dinner." She rolled her eyes at me, as if we were sharing this mutual feeling of disapproval, and drove away.

I returned to the flat later that afternoon, after completing my two Friday lectures. The first with Professor March had been in The Use of Personal Pronouns, and, after being scolded for being late by the middle-aged lecturer, I had sat through two hours of boredom, ending with the delivery of heavy criticism for my latest essay. Nevertheless, I tried to keep my spirits high as I plundered on through campus to my second lecture on Christopher Marlowe with Professor Turner. Professor Turner, it seemed, was one of the only lecturers at the university who was _not_ best friends with my disapproving flatmate. In fact, he had come under a heavy, disapproving firing from Mariah for his; hair (too long), clothes (too shabby) and his age (too young).

Professor Turner had longish, dark hair that he always wore back in a ponytail, revealing a hooped earring in one of his lobes. His clothes, it was true, were not the crisp suits of the other Professors, but he always looked what my mum would call _trendy_. Baggy canvas trousers and checked shirts were his usual attire, with various threadbare striped jumpers for when it was cold in the winter. He had a great enthusiasm for just about everything, and was keen from day one that we, as in the students and himself, were to be friends. He insisted on us calling him by his first name, but there was something within me; something probably instilled in me from my grammar school days, which prevented me from even _contemplating_ doing this. So, to me, he was still Professor Turner, and no amount of "Guys, call me Dean!" was ever going to change this.

But despite Mariah's misgivings about him, Professor Turner knew a great deal about his lecturing subject. He'd been teaching me about Jacobean Tragedy plays since September, and I already had three huge stacks of notes from his lectures. There was only a few scraps of paper from Professor March's lectures, and most of these were meaningless doodles.

So I enjoyed my second lecture of the day much more than the first, but I was still glad to finally collapse through the door of the flat at 3 o'clock, knowing I'd finished for the weekend. There was no one in when I got back, but this was not unusual. Ben often went out to 'jam' with some people in the block of flats opposite us, and Mariah was always off visiting one friend or another.

I didn't mind. It gave me the opportunity to work on some of my writing. I was currently working on an in-depth look at the workings of the university librarian; a gangly, spectacled third year who had been more than happy to talk to me about the Dewey Decimal System one lunchtime. But it wasn't exactly an exciting new biography. I mean, who really cares? No one, it seemed, judging from the viewer count on my blog. Still, I spent a productive few hours at my desk tinkering with my prose and researching libraries.

My Friday was still very much normal. There was nothing about the happenings so far to suggest that this day would in fact be one I would look back on as a turning point in my life. Not even when Ben came home in nothing but his underwear and a long trench coat, roaring drunk, could I say that anything was _really_ out of the ordinary. Friday nights often ran in this manner. Mariah put in an appearance not long after Ben had stumbled to his bedroom half in, half out, of the trench coat, and I was forced to make conversation with her and her insipid boyfriend, Kurt, in the kitchen for a full half an hour before I excused myself to make my weekly phone call home to my mum.

When I had first started uni the previous year, I had been filled with a fearful homesickness, and had rung my mum at least once a day to whinge about the; student accommodation, transport, people, food and my course. I would force my mum to listen to all this, and then to recount just about _everything_ that had happened in Plymouth since I had last spoken to her; desperate to hear comforting tales from home as I struggled on with life in London. However, part way through my first term, following a week of rather riotous house parties, I had decided that perhaps my new life wasn't as bad after all, and my phone calls home dwindled until, like now, it was just once a week on a Friday night.

There wasn't much to whinge about now anyway. It wasn't that things had dramatically improved since my first term, but rather _I'd_ become less bothered about most things, in particular about my course, and writing my biographical blog kept me positive. I could, however, have moaned about my flatmates quite a lot, but I knew there was little point. I had a horrible feeling that my mum would have in some way _approved_ of Mariah, and if I told her half the things I knew about Ben she would probably come and escort me personally away from Whiteford Road.

Living in a small, private area of Plymouth, my mum was largely ignorant of people, in a manner that sometimes bordered on discrimination. She liked the company of her 'regulars' in the bookshop (a bunch of middle class, fortysomething year old women) and our elderly neighbours, but anyone who wasn't these; she was wary of. She would be shocked to hear of some of the people I'd met in London, in particular the people in the flat opposite that Ben spent an awful lot of time with.

So I was selective indeed when I spoke to my mum on the phone; telling her only vague details and slight white lies about my flatmates and friends (though I didn't particularly have any of these), and I told her only little bits here and there about what I was studying, and my lecturers. I certainly never told her about Professor 'call me Dean!' Turner, as calling a lecturer by their first name was almost enough to give my mum a heart attack.

That evening, I began by telling her briefly about what I'd learnt in my lectures that day (admittedly not a lot), and informed her that 'Benjamin' (mum disapproved heavily of nicknames, another thing she had in common with Mariah) was very well; practising hard at his classical music. Mum had never met, nor was she ever likely to meet, Ben, and so it was perfectly safe telling her that he was studying classical music and played the trombone in the university orchestra. She would have had several things to say if I'd told her the truth anyway. And, after several sickening questions about 'dear Mariah', I also informed mum that my other flatmate was well too.

Mum had actually met Mariah on one occasion, when she'd come up with me at the beginning of the second year. Mum had only stayed for the afternoon, and then I'd encouraged her to head back home, for fear that she would see too much of the technicolor life in London for her liking, and drag me back to Plymouth with her. But it had been enough time for her to meet Mariah, and ever since then, mum had referred to my disapproving housemate as 'dear Mariah' and spoke often of her 'maturity' and 'sensible' opinions.

So after discussing things my end, I asked her about life in Plymouth, and how business was going.

"Dear, I can't complain," said my mum initially. And she then went on to complain about several different things including febreeze changing their packaging and a drop of sales in travel books, before exclaiming with a sudden enthusiasm;

"Oh, Martha!" she said. "I forgot to say before. Did you see on the news about that laboratory place? With all those strange, sciency types?"

I murmured some vague agreement. I had no clue what she was talking about, but I had no real interest in science, and so was unlikely to have catalogued such a news item as important. My mum continued excitedly anyway.

"Well you'll never guess what! It was all happening just up the road! Just up at Baskerville military research base on Dartmoor! I couldn't believe it when Marjorie told me. I had to look it up on the interweb just to check she'd got her facts right."

"Right…" I said, frowning at a spider that was descending was my ceiling. "And _what_ exactly was happening up there, mum?"

"Oh, all sorts of illegal DNA testing," said my mum. "And the use of illegal, ahem…_drugs_."

"Really?" I said, interested now. This didn't sound like the usual dull tales from the South West I was normally bombarded with. "What kind of illegal drugs?"

"Oh _I_ don't know darling," my mum seemed anxious that our conversation was going to turn to the subject of substance abuse. "Look it all up on the web if you're interested. Should be proud, too! First time our end of the country has made it onto the national news since that boy did the diving! Now, tell me, have you been separating all your laundry properly?"

Our conversation turned, faltered a little, and then ceased altogether with a fond farewell, and a promise to call the next week unless there was any vital news. I looked down at my phone. 53 minutes. One of our shorter calls.

I pulled myself up from the lying position I had found myself slipping down into on my bed during the conversation with my mother, and went to sit down at my desk. I almost didn't bother researching further what my mum had told me; I wasn't _that_ interested, but I could hear Mariah and Kurt laughing haughtily about something in the kitchen, and had no intention of joining them, so I opened up google and typed in 'Baskerville', and was surprised by what I found.

Little did I know that I'd grown up just a few miles from a famous horror story, involving a great black 'hound' that terrorised locals and tourists all year round. It sounded thrilling! As I read more about this horrifying monster and its tale, I could feel an old sort of childish excitement building inside me; as I always used to get when starting a new fiction book. Only this wasn't fiction, this was _real_! It was true _life_! It was-

"_proven to be nothing but the effects of a hallucinogenic drug produced at the Baskerville military base as part of a project that has now been terminated. The whole base is now under investigation."_

I stopped reading, heavy with disappointment. So none of it was real after all. I had thought, for one brief, mad moment, that somewhere here was a biography crying out to be written. Perhaps a collection of biographies, involving the terrorised locals and their take on the hound. But alas, it was not to be. There was nothing here but a load of mad scientists, and who would want to read about them?

Begrudgingly, I scanned to the bottom of the page.

"_The mystery was uncovered by none other than Consulting Detective, Sherlock Holmes, and his partner Doctor John Watson."_

Sherlock Holmes.

And there was the shiver down my spine and the hairs on my arm standing up. Consulting Detective. It sounded so…_exciting_. A hidden gem from the streets of London.

And I knew then that I would write the biography of Sherlock Holmes if it killed me. If only I'd known just how accurate this turn of phrase was at the time. If I'd known then what I know now, I certainly wouldn't have blundered into my project with quite as much gusto as I did. In fact, I would probably have run as far away from it as possible.


End file.
